What drives do you have mounted on the Accelsior? OWC's or a different brand?

Click to expand...

One running an emergency copy of Yosemite, (I don’t use a recovery partition. I think a full OS is much better). That is a 40GB OWC Mercury Extreme Pro SSD.
The other is my day to day SSD. A 1TB Samsung SSD 840 EVO 1TB.

Most people will use large spinners for archival and less performance-sensitive data, and solid state hard drives for the OS and active application files.

Also consider SSHD (solid state hybrid drives). These combine a large spinner with a multi-GB SSD cache. For many applications they're a nice compromise - much faster than a spinner, but the cost per terabyte is only slightly more than a standard spinner.

Most people will use large spinners for archival and less performance-sensitive data, and solid state hard drives for the OS and active application files.

Also consider SSHD (solid state hybrid drives). These combine a large spinner with a multi-GB SSD cache. For many applications they're a nice compromise - much faster than a spinner, but the cost per terabyte is only slightly more than a standard spinner.

Click to expand...

They’re not that bad these days, and often on special offer, especially at OWC. That’s the time to pounce but yes they are not completely suitable for everything.

Most people will use large spinners for archival and less performance-sensitive data, and solid state hard drives for the OS and active application files.

Also consider SSHD (solid state hybrid drives). These combine a large spinner with a multi-GB SSD cache. For many applications they're a nice compromise - much faster than a spinner, but the cost per terabyte is only slightly more than a standard spinner.

Click to expand...

Today's PCIe-SSD can do what $2,000 worth of SCSI drives, cables, controllers - and external cases - could not. Quietly and little power used.

The days of ... ($1000 100MB or older $1500 10MB IBM-XT "upgrade") and yes I have "thrown" $10K down the drain I guess

The OWC Accelsior S seems to be fairly new, I wonder how it compares to the Apricorn Velocity Solo X2? It is quite a bit cheaper.

Click to expand...

I've used a few Velocity Solo X2's (even two at a time) and they work great. One big difference is that the X2 can handle two SSD's on one card for a total 800MB/s throughput (as in a RAID 0 or 1 setup). With a cheap cable pulling power for the 2nd SSD from an unused SATA drive bay (the X2 does not supply power to the 2nd SSD), it is a way to get a little extra performance and capacity.

The price of the S certainly undercuts the X2, though. You could also get two S cards, put SSD's in both, and then RAID 0 them, getting close to 1000MB/s read speeds.

One last alternative for super fast speeds are PCI-e blades. There is a whole thread here, but the first post says it all, really.

Not sure about your budget, but two S cards, with two 256GB SSD's (found on sale), would get you 500GB of superfast bootable storage.

Neither could my 10k / 15k scsi system, scratch array either and not intended, not suitable, media libraries? put them on green slower drives. And there is need for hardware RAID6 for important large media projects, client files where you might want to spend that $2K!

I am running two of the OWC Accelsior S cards both with Samsung 850 EVO 1tb drives. They have been working flawlessly. The only hiccup is that the drive that is not the OS X 10.10 boot drives shows up as being ejectable, which I find rather annoying. Wish I could disable that.

Installed with an 850 EVO. Works great. Getting full performance out of the SSD. I don't use Boot Camp with the SSD so I don't have anything to add on that.

The price seems cheaper than the other SSD PCIe cards, so that's nice too. The prices get ridiculous for something that's basically a SATA6 controller on a board with a built in port. You could get a external drive case for cheaper, which includes a USB/Firewire controller and a case to boot.

Make sure you have a PCI Express 2.0 slot open, otherwise you might get slower performance. On the 2008s and earlier only some of the slots are PCIe 2.0.

I've used a few Velocity Solo X2's (even two at a time) and they work great. One big difference is that the X2 can handle two SSD's on one card for a total 800MB/s throughput (as in a RAID 0 or 1 setup). With a cheap cable pulling power for the 2nd SSD from an unused SATA drive bay (the X2 does not supply power to the 2nd SSD), it is a way to get a little extra performance and capacity.
The price of the S certainly undercuts the X2, though. You could also get two S cards, put SSD's in both, and then RAID 0 them, getting close to 1000MB/s read speeds.
One last alternative for super fast speeds are PCI-e blades. There is a whole thread here, but the first post says it all, really.
Not sure about your budget, but two S cards, with two 256GB SSD's (found on sale), would get you 500GB of superfast bootable storage.

I took the plunge as well. It's still early days, but the difference is not as big as I expected. Startup is a lot faster, and everything feels a little snappier, but not the ginormous performance boost I thought it would be.

I guess I have been spoiled by my 2013 MacBookAir. Basic stuff like browsing/email etc. still feels snappier there.

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.